The present invention relates generally to the field of computer systems, and more particularly to improving software warmup efficiency by reducing the duration of a software warmup process for virtual machines.
The use of virtualization is becoming widespread. Virtualization describes a software abstraction that separates a computer resource and its use from an underlying physical device. Generally, a virtual machine (VM) provides a software execution environment and may have a virtual processor, virtual system memory, virtual storage, and various virtual devices. Virtual machines have the ability to accomplish tasks independent of particular hardware implementations or configurations. System virtualization is implemented through some managing functionality, typically hypervisor technology. Hypervisors, also called virtual machine managers (VMMs), use a thin layer of code in software or firmware to achieve fine-grained, dynamic resource sharing. Because hypervisors provide the greatest level of flexibility in how virtual resources are defined and managed, they are generally the primary technology for system virtualization.
Virtual machines may be migrated between a source host computing platform (“the source host”) and a destination host computing platform (“the destination host”) connected over a network, which may be a local area network or a wide area network that may include the Internet. Migration permits a clean separation between hardware and software, thereby improving facilities fault management, load balancing, and low-level system maintenance. Live migration permits an administrator to move a running virtual machine between different physical machines without disconnecting a running client or application program. For a successful live migration, memory, storage, and network connectivity of the virtual machine needs to be migrated from the source host to the destination host.